


Goin' on a Holiday

by birdbrains



Series: Eat Rotten Fruit [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Animal Death, Arguing, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Dehumanization, Gore, Identity Issues, Multi, Obedience, Robots, Scars, Snark, Stone partner, Trauma, graysexuality, sorry if I'm overtagging these are warnings not advertisements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 16:57:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10391505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdbrains/pseuds/birdbrains
Summary: “I didn’t say I’d do the mission,” Steve said.“Why not?” Fury said.“I don’t know,” Steve said. “I—there’s not a lot I don’t want to do to anyone who worked on the Winter Soldier, and that’s—well. It’s not a very high minded reason to decide to do something.”“Don’t need you to be high minded,” Fury said. “I just need you to kill her.”





	1. The Tin Man Diner

“I give you your faults.”  
“My faults!” Meg cried. “But I’m always trying to get rid of my faults.”  
“Yes,” Mrs. Whatsit said. “However, I think you’ll find they’ll come in very handy on Camazotz.”  
—Madeline L’Engle, _A Wrinkle in Time_

 

It all started—no, it didn’t all start with the Tin Man Diner on 22nd Street. Who would be stupid enough to think that it did?

A few days after he met nobody, Steve went for his morning run on the mall. But he found himself wanting to go further and further—it wouldn’t be right to say “until it hurt.” Of course it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go home and see Bucky, or that there was anywhere in particular he didn’t want to go. He just didn’t want to stop moving.

It wasn’t smart to draw so much attention to himself by running so fast he was just a blur in everybody else’s vision. Fuck it, though. It was easier and better when he couldn’t quite see the edges of the world—like when he was young and nearsighted. It all ran together in appealing watercolors.

Maybe there was part of him that didn’t want to go home.

If Steve was away from Bucky for a day or two, of course he’d start missing him; and of course Bucky was always easy to be around. He was easy to be around even at the worst times, because he was always funny. But after all this time Steve had spent proving to Bucky that he could laugh about what had happened, that it didn’t bother him, he was finding it harder and harder to follow through. He didn’t mind that Bucky was different. He liked how Bucky was now as much as he’d liked any version of Bucky. But looking at Bucky’s clever, laughing face, and knowing the things that had happened, made him want to unfocus his eyes.

He ended up at the Tin Man Diner, which was a place he and Bucky occasionally read the newspaper together, but where he more often went by himself to try and apply himself to books. Even on a Saturday, which this was, it was never more than half full in the Tin Man Diner, the eggs were thick and greasy, and the coffee didn’t taste like anything. Somehow that was what made it a place where you could feel both more and less of a person in a sometimes necessary way.

But this wasn’t to be. As soon as Steve sat down and started perusing the menu Katie gave him—as if he didn’t have a set and strategic order that he adhered to like the Stations of the Cross—Nick Fury slid into the seat across from him. Well, he didn’t exactly slide. He was ginger about it. “I didn’t say you could sit with me,” Steve snapped.

“It’s high school all over again,” said Nick Fury.

“I’m sorry, are you joking with me? Don’t you think that’d fly better if you weren’t following Bucky and me around and hiding behind trees instead of just talking to us like a normal person?”

Fury said, “I act like a normal person when I’m approaching normal persons.”

“You’re really hitting it out of the park here,” Steve said. “Oh, hi, Katie!”

Katie put a cup of coffee in front of each of them. “Ready to order?” she said.

“Sure am,” Steve said. “I want two breakfast specials, both with fried eggs, one with rye toast and sausage links and the other with bacon and blueberry pancakes.”

“And you—cheeseburger club, light on the mustard, with sweet potato fries?” Katie asked Fury. Steve had to clamp his mouth shut to keep from squawking with anger.

“That’s right,” Fury said. “Oh, well, I think I’ll have onion rings this time.”

“Got it,” Katie said.

“You can have the onion rings,” Fury said magnanimously.

“I don’t want your damn onion rings,” said Steve. He jerked his head around to make sure Katie was out of earshot and continued, “Where the hell do you get off, Mr. Fury? You like to make people uncomfortable? Why wouldn’t you just come up and talk to me instead of following us—you _know_ Bucky can see you, by the way—not to mention _infiltrating my diner_?”

“I’ve been coming here since you were in the frozen foods aisle,” Fury protested. “It’s a pain to switch diners at my age. Yes, it made things more convenient when you and Barnes started coming here too—I just started sitting over there, around the corner, with one of those hats that seems to confuse people so much.”

“It just boggles my mind, to be honest with you,” Steve said. “I’m usually here alone. Bucky and I barely talk when we’re here together—we’re _reading_. What’s the point of listening in? You’re not listening to us when we’re at home. Bucky would have caught it, unless he’s not as good as he thinks he is.”

“Far from it, he’s better than he even knows he is,” Fury said, and nodded at Katie as she brought over their food. “Thanks. Can we get another small plate for my friend here?”

“I never said I wanted the onion rings,” grumbled Steve.

“It’s just a potential course of action you can take if it strikes you as a good use of your time,” Fury said. “Speaking of—“

“Oh Jesus,” Steve said.

Fury fixed him with his eye. “I haven’t been surveilling your apartment, if that’s so important to you.”

“Yes, we’re so hopelessly old-fashioned that we don’t like people listening in on our private conversations,” Steve said. He struggled to swallow his three-layer bite of pancake.

“Speak for yourself—I don’t think Barnes cares,” Fury said. “We spoke last time you were here together, when you were in the bathroom.” Steve almost choked on his pancake but bravely downed it and shoved in another bite. “If you’re wondering, he was very pleasant to talk to. He said it was nice to get a chance to meet me in less violent circumstances, and that I should speak directly to you because you’re going to throw a fit sooner or later when you realize how much I watch the two of you.”

“Bucky doesn’t have the most well-developed sense of privacy,” Steve said. “It doesn’t mean I’m oversensitive.” He winced; he hadn’t meant to say anything bad about Bucky.

Just like anyone would have, Fury said, “He seems all right. That’s the main reason I’ve had my eye on you—I didn’t expect to have an easy time convincing you to do anything, and I haven’t flat-out needed you yet, so I didn’t try. But I needed to know how he was doing, since I was going to have to approach you sooner or later.”

“You mean if he was dangerous, I’d be too busy dealing with that to do any missions,” Steve said. Against his will he was eating the onion rings. “Or if he couldn’t take care of himself, I couldn’t leave him.”

“Either outcome would make things different, wouldn’t it?” Fury said. “You’d be really busy, really hard to talk to—but on the other hand, very motivated to take down the remains of Hydra.”

“Did you expect that he wouldn’t get better?” Steve asked.

“I didn’t expect anything,” Fury said, “but if I had, he’d be doing a lot better than I expected. Obviously, I haven’t had hours of deep heart-rending conversations with the man, but he’s doing well enough to look and act quite a bit like anyone who isn’t a former unwilling murder weapon. Which is—well, isn’t that better than _you_ expected, Captain?”

“Captain of what?” Steve said. He didn’t have anything to say to that, because—he wasn’t even sure he’d have anything to say to someone he really wanted to talk to. Not that there was any such person, but even so.

Bucky was much, much better than anyone had a right to expect, but it didn’t always feel like enough. It was ungrateful and ultimately just not true, but sometimes Steve imagined it would be better if Bucky didn’t seem so normal. Bucky often shrugged it off, which was good, but watching him butt up against the triggers and all the ways he didn’t work right anymore—it just made it look worse.

“Well, save one or two onion rings for me,” Fury said.

“Oh, right,” Steve said. “Sorry.” He went back to his two orders of eggs.

“I’m seventy percent done with my sandwich, so I need to get down to it,” Fury said. “Have you ever heard of a person named Grace Russell?”

“Where would I hear of her?” Steve said. Fury removed a Polaroid from his coat pocket and slid it across the table to Steve. Steve took one look at the picture and turned it over onto its face. “Excuse me, you didn’t just show me that, did you? You must have a better way of answering me than to intentionally try to upset me.”

“Well, you can see why I thought you might have heard of her,” Fury said, turning the picture back over. It was like one of those pictures Sam liked to put on Instagram of himself posing next to street signs or giant animal statues with a cheesy smile and a hand gesture. The only difference was that instead of a street sign, Grace was posing next to the Winter Soldier. She had her arm looped around him and her hand stuck inside his left arm, which was cracked open horizontally, with the bottom half hanging off the top like a broken jaw.

“What, is this a joke?” Steve said. “Why did she do that?”

“She’s changing the arm,” Fury said. “She didn’t work on him that often—by the nineties, she would have scoffed at just repairing damage—but Grace Russell was responsible for all the major upgrades to his arm in the last forty years.”

Steve would have liked the looks of Grace if he’d seen her in any other context. She had curly black hair and glasses and a disarmingly crooked smile. It had to be an old picture, because Grace looked to be in her twenties or thirties. Bucky had the look of a very drunk person trying to stay conscious—his eyes were unfocused, his mouth slack—which objectively wasn’t a good thing, but sort of made the picture easier to look at.

“Of course, that’s just the human interest part of the story,” said Fury. “She mainly built robots—little arachnid things, I’m sure you know the type—until about five years ago, when she started turning herself into a cyborg. Now she has neural implants that allow her to sync up her thoughts with her robots and the facility she keeps them in. She also has three metal limbs and I’d prefer if she doesn’t have time to give herself a fourth one.”

Thank goodness Katie had brought Steve some strawberry jelly instead of marmalade. He spread it on his toast while he waited for Fury to keep talking.

“I think Russell was playing a longer game. But after you shut down most of Hydra, she was very well situated to take over what was left. An agent I sent in confirmed to me that she’s hiding out in an old facility in Vermont, making final upgrades to herself before she goes out to take control of other Hydra bases and agents. When she finishes her transformation she’ll be almost unstoppable and take more resources than I have. While she’s working on herself she’s physically vulnerable, but the robots and the building will defend her. Building’ll close up altogether if it knows someone’s coming. That’s what you’re for.”

“I don’t get why you need me to do it,” Steve said. “I see why you think you can _get_ me to do it, but isn’t there someone who’s better for this kind of job?”

“Not really,” Fury said. He took the last onion ring and crunched it. “I could send enough people to take out Russell and her robots, but then the building will notice and they’ll never even get in. I think you can take them by yourself, and there’s only one of you, and I think you can be quiet.” He took a long swallow of coffee. “I hope you can be quiet.”

“I didn’t say I’d do it,” Steve said.

“Why not?” Fury said.

“I don’t know,” Steve said. He put the picture under his coffee cup, and then slid it back out. “I—there’s not a lot I don’t want to do to anyone who worked on the Winter Soldier, and that’s—well. It’s not a very high minded reason to decide to do something.”

“Don’t need you to be high minded,” Fury said. “I just need you to kill her.”


	2. I'm Ready Now

Steve usually came home a lot earlier, but it wasn’t like he stuck to any schedule perfectly. He didn’t usually go somewhere to eat immediately after running, because he tended to smell, but sometimes he was just really hungry and he didn’t feel too guilty about stinking up the Tin Man Diner. Grease didn’t smell too different from sweat to regular people. He came in the door of their apartment building holding the large envelope Fury had given him, and he stashed it in his room before continuing on to the shower. Being a respectful roommate who didn’t feel the need to walk around in the altogether, he made sure to bring a change of clothes in the bathroom with him.

You could argue there wasn’t much point in modesty when he lived with someone who’d already gotten him off several times, but Steve felt like there was a time and place to go waving your dick around, and it was when you actually needed it for something. Of course, Steve had no sooner taken his clothes off and started trying to finagle the perfect shower temperature than Bucky was tapping on the metal doorknob of the bathroom with his metal finger. He sounded like he was playing the spoons, and it was very grating.

“Buck, can you wait? I’m taking a shower.”

“Oh, sure, fine, I’ll just pee in front of the bathroom door and make a big yellow stain on the carpet.”

“It wouldn’t be yellow if you drank enough water,” Steve said, turning up the cold knob a little and testing it with his shoulder. “Why didn’t you go earlier?”

“Because I didn’t have to go then, _obviously_ ,” Bucky said.

“You expect me to believe your bladder was completely empty until the moment I came in here to take a shower, and then a bunch of pee just teleported into it? I’m gonna let you in, but I bet as soon as I do I’ll be asking the age old question”—Steve opened the door—“Bucky, where are your clothes? And if you wanted to shower with me, why didn’t you just say so?’”

Bucky was already squishing himself up with Steve like a horrible snail sticking itself to a rock. “God, you smell so good,” Steve thought he heard Bucky say into his neck.

“Bucky, isn’t it a little early in the morning for such a bald faced lie?”

“March,” Bucky said, and not so gently pushed on Steve until he stepped backward into the shower. The temperature he’d selected was pretty great, and Bucky obviously thought so too because he loosened his grip on Steve for a minute to just feel the water. Then he stepped back from him a little more and said, “He finally talked to you, huh?”

Steve had given up on asking how Bucky knew stuff like that. It was ridiculous and honestly it was better to just think of it as an annoying superpower than to actually comb through the reasons he was like that. “Well, that’s not what I thought we were going to do in here,” he finally said.

“We can do that too,” Bucky said. “Here. I’ll jerk you off and you tell me what you guys talked about.”

“That’s a horrible idea,” Steve said.

“You haven’t even tried it.”

“Seriously, I wouldn’t keep it secret from you. You don’t need to seduce it out of me.”

“I don’t actually think this is a honeypot mission,” Bucky said.

“A what?”

“You know, when an agent uses sex to get close to a target, either to get information or to recruit them.” He started laughing at the look on Steve’s face. “They didn’t have me do that stuff, baby! Believe me, you’re the only one who wants a piece of this freakshow. You think people sit around jacking off to Frankenstein’s monster?”

“Oh, come on,” Steve said uncomfortably.

“What?”

Steve wasn’t exactly the type of person who was going to start making a thousand speeches about how good looking Bucky was. Sometimes he felt bad—maybe it would help Bucky if Steve was like that. On the other hand maybe it would just annoy him.

In the end Steve just rubbed his knuckles softly along the inside of Bucky’s neck, and asked him, “You ever hear of Grace Russell?”

Bucky looked blank. “Did I kill her?”

“We’d all have less trouble on our hands if you had. She’s a Hydra engineer—”

“Of course I don’t know her name, then,” Bucky said. “I never knew anyone’s names.”

Feeling stupid, Steve grabbed the soap and started lathering himself up. “You’d know pictures, though, right? They’re in my room in a big tan envelope. There’s some information about what she’s doing now, too.”

He hesitated and Bucky said, smiling, “What, you think it’s gonna upset me?” He put his arm around Steve and kissed him, then moved away from him to step out of the shower.

“Dry off first,” Steve said. “Don’t drip on the papers.”

“I wasn’t born in a barn,” Bucky said.

“That’s your second big lie of the day and it’s only nine-fifteen!” Steve called around the shower curtain as Bucky went out.

It was a bullshit shower curtain, too. Bucky and Sam had replaced the old blue one with a curtain that was obviously intended for children and featured cartoon lions and giraffes. “The giraffe is you,” Sam said, “and the lions are normal size people!” He could barely manage to get the words out before he and Bucky collapsed into shrieking laughter.

“God, she was so cute,” Bucky said coming back into the bathroom. “I mean, she looked fine last time I saw her, but when she was our age, hot damn. I had a crush on that girl a mile long—would’ve taken her for a Dorothy, though, or a Helen.”

“There’s no Helens or Dorothys anymore,” Steve said, putting soap in his hair.

“You think she’s cute too? Miss...Russell, is it?”

“Yeah, I guess so. My mind wasn’t going in that direction when Fury was showing me the pictures.”

Bucky was sitting on the toilet going through the things that had been in the envelope. He’d at least left the door open so the pictures and papers wouldn’t get all steamed up. “I wasn’t sure she was as pretty as I thought—just, Hydra wasn’t always so equilateral, and especially when I first met her, most of the women I saw were lying in pools of blood—”

“Was that your pick-up line?”

“Stick your head out here.”

“I know I’m cute and you want to kiss me, but I don’t like to just drip all over the floor with impunity like you are.”

“Fair enough. Anyway, she was really funny. Didn’t joke with me too much, but I liked hearing her talk. Used to hope it would be her fixing me—not that our storied history’s exactly the point. What do you need to know?”

“Nothing in particular. I’m just curious. Pass me my towel?”

Bucky sprang up and put the papers down on the sink so he could give Steve the towel. “I liked her,” he said. “She’s feisty. Doesn’t take shit from anyone.”

“Doesn’t take shit how,” Steve said drying off in the shower with the water turned off. He fastened the towel around his waist and stepped out; Bucky picked up the papers so Steve could make a little pile of his shaving and toothbrushing accessories.

“Well, one time I couldn’t stop screaming while she was taking part of my arm off, so when she got it off she swung it at me and basically broke my nose with my own elbow.”

“Oh,” Steve said.

“I should have had better self control.”

“I’m gonna go out in the hall for a minute,” Steve said. Too bad he couldn’t say he was going to the bathroom.

“What, are you mad at me?” Bucky said standing up.

“No,” Steve said, “and for God’s sake...I just mean, can you put on a bathrobe or something?”

“Then will you talk to me?”

“I guess.”

“Okay.”

Steve went out and leaned against the wall in the hallway, squeezing the bridge of his nose. Bucky came out in the bathrobe and leaned against the opposite wall.

“What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything!” Steve burst out. “I’m stupid!” To his horror his voice was stretched out and shaking.

“Oh, come on,” Bucky said, a little impatiently, but warmly. He came slowly over and put his arms around Steve and his face into Steve’s damp neck. They slid down to the floor together. “So what are you being stupid about this time?” Bucky asked.

“I don’t want you to be alone in this,” was all Steve could get himself to say, at least at first.

“Well, that is a stupid thing to say, because I’m not,” Bucky said.

“You’re just saying that.”

“Oh, come on,” Bucky said again. He squeezed Steve’s waist with his human arm. “Oh, Steve, you’re so special and different. No one could ever possibly understand how pure of heart you are.”

“That’s mean,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “Thing is, it’s actually true, too. You’ve been really patient with me.”

Steve kissed him for a minute. “Nothing to be patient about,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” Bucky said for the third time. Steve stuck his forehead deep into Bucky’s shoulder. It wasn’t the comfortable side, but oh well. The bathrobe helped cushion it. Steve laid his head sideways.

“I just, I don’t think it’s that funny for someone to break your nose because you were screaming, though,” he said.

“So?”

“Well, I guess I don’t want you to think I’m yellow.” Bucky’s hand came up to rub circles in his hair and Steve could hear the servos whirring around in Bucky’s bicep. The metal felt amazingly good on his scalp—much better than regular fingers, actually. “About what happened—I don’t want you to think I can’t stand talking about it, or something. I don’t want you to think I can’t handle it.”

“I haven’t felt like that for a while now,” Bucky said. “Wait.”

He scooted around so he was sitting propped against the wall, with Steve half in his lap, leaning against his chest. He ran his hand down from Steve’s neck along his bare damp shoulder and back. “Fucking freezing,” Steve grumbled. Bucky pulled the bathrobe sleeve up over his hand. “Thank you,” Steve said.

“There wasn’t always a lot for me to like, so I liked what was there,” Bucky said. “I swear, I wouldn’t—I mean, why would you feel like that? You _weren’t_ there.” He stroked Steve’s neck with the bathrobe wrapped hand. “It’s really—you know, when someone good looking is cutting you up instead of someone ugly who has nothing funny to say. No, it’s not as nice as having a big warm punk wrapped around me like this. I freely admit this is a lot better.” Steve lapped his shoulder where the bathrobe had been pulled down, and Bucky gasped and then said, “Cut it out, I can’t talk if you do that. Keep your mouth shut unless you have something interesting to say.”

Steve closed his mouth and smiled into the shoulder.

“God, you’re the best,” Bucky said. “How about we _don’t_ say anything interesting? You hold me and kiss me some, and I’ll get you off?”

“Fine by me,” Steve said.

He sat up and they kissed a little bit. “I know we have to talk about the mission, I can be ready to talk about it now if I need to be,” Bucky said, ducking his head forward so he could graze Steve’s earlobe with his teeth, “I’m always ready, but how about we just have fun first? Then I’ll get myself together.”

Steve wasn’t aware that Bucky didn’t have himself together. He never seemed especially upset and often, especially lately, he seemed happy almost all the way through.

“Steve?” Bucky pulled back. “Do we not have time?”

“No, it’s not for a few days. Tuesday.”

“Okay.”

“We have time. You want to move to my bed, or are you really attached to the hallway floor for some reason?”

“You’re the one who was moping in the hallway,” Bucky said.

“Give me a few minutes and then meet me there,” Steve said. “I just want to shave.”

“I don’t care if you’re _shaved_.”

“I do,” Steve said.

He tried to sound prissy, like he thought it was a mortal sin to fool around without doing your personal grooming first. He actually had an ulterior motive. After he finished shaving and brushing his teeth, he went into his room and got dressed in clothes he knew Bucky would hate. Plaid underwear, khakis, a navy blue shirt—he was considering a sweater, but argyle socks were more likely to offend. He was pulling the second sock on when Bucky called, “Hey sweetheart, you ready for me?” and came into the room in the ugly old bathrobe. When he saw Steve he went speechless with horror, but that didn’t last long. “Steve, _why_? You’re the best looking guy I know, _why_?”

He was nearly wailing; Steve couldn’t help laughing at him and giving away his own joke.

Bucky narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re shitty,” he announced. “At least put on jeans or something instead of those Godawful khakis if you’re going to hide your light under a bushel.” He sat down on the bed next to Steve and reached over to unbutton his shirt; Steve batted his hands away. Instead Bucky put one hand on Steve’s waist, and one in his hair. “I just don’t get it,” he said. “You dressed awful then, and now, when styles are completely different, you still manage to look awful by the standards of today. Are you some kind of reverse genius?’

“’Reverse genius?’ Shut up,” Steve said. “You can’t even get a good insult out of your mouth nowadays.”

“Your fucking hair when I first saw you again,” Bucky said, nuzzling into him. “No wonder I didn’t recognize you.”

“Why do you have to be such a bully all the time, Buck?” Steve said and then, because Bucky’s right hand had gone from his waist to his fly, “No, you first.” Bucky immediately got a pissed off look and tried to initiate a staring contest. He had to be stupid if he thought he was going to win any staring contest with Steve.

“I don’t need to be first,” he said as if Steve was trying to make him walk over broken glass.

“I was first last time,” Steve said.

“Jesus Christ you’re annoying,” said Bucky.

“You’re doing exactly the same thing!”

“How about a compromise,” Bucky said. “I’ll jerk you off fast, then you look after me for a while, then I get you off more thoroughly?”

Steve put a really disapproving face on. “That is the opposite of a compromise. You just gave yourself twice as much.”

“It’s twice as much for you too, stupid.”

“No it’s not.” Bucky looked like he didn’t believe that, so Steve had to pull out the big guns. The fact that it was true didn’t make it less embarrassing to talk about, “Look, Buck”—Steve moved his head away from Bucky’s hand so he could fiddle with his own hair while he was talking—“I like doing you first because it gets me kind of worked up, and then I can think about doing you while you’re getting me off, kapeesh?”

Bucky still looked suspiciously at him. “Really?”

“Yes,” Steve grumbled.

“That’s sort of...sweet, I guess. Nice,” Bucky allowed, like saying the words was giving him a rash.

“If it’s a hardship, we can do every other time, but it’s still my turn.”

“Fine. You win,” Bucky said. He scooted back and laid down on the bed. “Come here and I’ll show you what I want, okay?”

“Yeah, you want a new thing? What is it?”

“Well, you kind of put the idea into my head,” Bucky said, pulling the bathrobe down over his shoulders. He gave Steve a look and Steve pulled off the sleeves for him, pushed it down to his waist. Bucky indicated the thick scars that radiated from his metal arm and shoulder. “So this whole mess is pretty sensitive,” he said.

“Oh good, I can work with that,” said Steve.

“Let me finish, don’t just put your head down and start chewing on my scar tissue like it’s beef jerky.” Steve started giggling so hard he had to just lie down for a minute with his head on the scar tissue. “Wow, looks like my horrible injury is hilarious, that’s nice to know,” Bucky said, stroking his hair. “I’m just saying, it’s really sensitive so you got to work up to it. I’m thinking fingers, then lips, then tongue, then _maybe_ teeth. I won’t like it if you go all at once. Here. Start like this.” He ran his human fingers softly over the scars, and Steve, leaning over him, did the same until Bucky, satisfied with Steve’s technique, put his own hand down by his side, tipped his head back, and smiled at the ceiling. “That’s really good, Stevie.”

“Don’t call me that,” Steve said automatically. Bucky’s right hand came back up to cup the back of his head.

“ _Steeeeeeeev,_ ” he intoned in an annoying voice, pulling Steve’s face down onto the scars. Steve went gladly. “Ee,” Bucky added at the last minute.

“Fuck you.” Steve kissed the scars grumpily. “You’re the worst,” he breathed out onto the ropy skin, and his breath must have felt pretty nice because Bucky twitched violently and made a _great_ noise. Even when not compared to the annoying singsong Stevie voice, it was about the greatest noise Steve had ever heard. Steve held back a minute, just kind of rubbing his nose and mouth gently against the scars—Bucky felt tense under him, his hand tight enough in Steve’s hair that it hurt a little.

He didn’t know exactly how to ramp it up, but he just started kissing with his mouth open, messy and soft. He thought Bucky’s heart was going rabbit-quick, which was very unusual, but he couldn’t really hear or feel it over the noise and motion from Bucky’s left arm, which was whirring so much that it sounded like a blender. Steve ran his tongue along where the scars met up with the metal, and Bucky made the amazing sound again. “Oh, _God_ , Steve,” he said, and he sounded like he was hyperventilating or maybe choking, “please, _Steve_ —“

“You okay?” Steve said, poking his head up. Bucky flinched, and narrowed his eyes.

“Yes, obviously I’m okay,” he said. “No, Steve, this is probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

He seemed surprisingly close to angry, and Steve flagged. “Hey, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t—”

It was just, he hadn’t ever heard Bucky sound like that before, or breathe like that. The closest thing was when he came back from being nobody, and that was just crying, and chemically induced anyway.

“It’s different,” Steve said lamely. “Hearing you—I didn’t mean—I like it.”

“Aw, I’m sorry,” Bucky said, petting his hair where he’d pulled it. He flashed a weak smile at Steve. “I like it too. I’m gonna put my hand over my mouth. Don’t look at me until we’re done, okay?’

“You don’t have to do that,” Steve said.

“I mean, I want to.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry I got weird.”

“Not a problem,” Steve said. He went to put his face down, but Bucky stopped him.

“Actually, let’s put in a pin in all that for now.”

“Oh...okay,” Steve said. “Sorry I asked if you were okay.”

“Well, that’s really stupid,” Bucky said. “Come in here.” They maneuvered around so Steve could lie in the comfortable side of Bucky’s neck.

“Was it...bad?” Steve said, though he felt sort of guilty asking somehow.

“Couldn’t be less bad, not even possible,” Bucky said. “I don’t like losing control like that, is all. It felt really, really good, though—just was too much of a good thing, kind of.”

“Oh.”

“Sometime, maybe. We’ll work up to it, if you don’t mind trying again after that. Sorry I scared you.”

“You didn’t scare me,” Steve said. “I liked it. I just wasn’t used to it either.”

“Really is nobody like you,” Bucky said, ruffling his hair. Steve grimaced. “Don’t be shitty. You’re just the best. You want me to blow you?”

“I do,” Steve said, rolling onto his back.

“Oh, good. I’ll be quiet, even.”

“Noooo,” Steve said. “That’ll never work.”

“You don’t mind if I talk? That’s even better.”

Steve could count the number of blowjobs he’d received in his life on one hand. Two weeks ago, it had been no hands. The inaugural blowjobs had some things in common—they were all from Bucky, and they were all very chatty. Steve didn’t think you were supposed to talk while giving a blowjob, but by any reasonable standard they were Bucky’s first blowjobs also and he just wouldn’t shut up. Steve was pretty sure Bucky was asking for feedback on his technique, or maybe telling Steve he smelled and tasted amazing or whatever bullshit he was slinging these days, but obviously Steve couldn’t understand him because he was a torso length away from Steve’s ears, wasn’t talking very loud, and was _giving a blowjob_. “For the love of God, Buck,” Steve would explain patiently, over and over again, “I can’t understand what you’re saying, because my dick is in your mouth, remember?”

“Ohhh,” Bucky would say, pulling off. “Oh, right. It’s so small, I didn’t even notice it was in there.” He kissed Steve’s hip and rubbed his face against it. Steve didn’t think God had ever created a worse person.

This time Bucky was especially pleased to get started, because he thought he was going to get to take Steve’s pants off. “No, that’s fine, just pull it out and blow me with the khakis on,” Steve said.

Bucky was aghast. “I’m not putting my face on those things!”

“Oh, well, I guess you can’t blow me,” Steve said.

“I can’t work under these conditions, I’m going on strike,” Bucky said. Steve beamed at him. “God, I hate you,” Bucky said. He started opening Steve’s fly with his teeth.

“You’ll rip my pants up,” Steve said.

“Oh and that’s such a tragedy, is it,” Bucky said. He took the head of Steve’s dick in his mouth and started halfheartedly sucking it while continuing to complain about something, probably the khakis.

“Hey Bucky,” Steve said.

“Mmph?”

“Is this a trigger?”

Bucky raised an eyebrow at him and took him a little deeper. “Mmwhatrimm?”

“You know, maple makes you go silent—does the taste of my dick make you talk?”

Bucky stared at him and started laughing so hard that he not only dropped Steve’s dick out of his mouth but fell off the bed and onto the floor. Steve was pretty sure he was rolling around on his back down there. Pretty soon Bucky’s head appeared over the side of the bed. “I try to do something nice for you!” he said. “Here I am, sucking you off so nicely, not asking for anything in return—“

“And being shitty about my clothes while you’re at it,” Steve said.

“If your clothes had shit on them it would be an improvement,” said Bucky.

“Leave me alone,” said Steve.

Instead Bucky crawled back up over him and pulled Steve into his mouth again. He was a little quieter, and there wasn’t any reason anything might be wrong, but Steve still wanted to check. He put his hand out and cupped Bucky’s face, running his fingers back around to his ear.

The talking was actually pretty helpful, because, well—Steve could have gotten kind of nervous about blowjobs otherwise. The first time he’d been all scared that he wouldn’t be able to stop picturing that supposedly Jersey tech using the Winter Soldier’s mouth as a Fleshlight. Obviously, he knew it wasn’t exactly the same as a non-paralyzed, non-brainwashed person blowing someone who actually cared about him, and he also thought Bucky would think he was an idiot if he knew Steve was worrying about it—but that just made him obsess about it even more. He felt sure the first time would be awful—that he’d fail to enjoy himself, basically, and Bucky would feel inadequate. Instead he spent the whole time trying to figure out what the hell Bucky was talking about down there, right up until he fell apart inside him.

Now Bucky had wrapped his mouth so warm and tight around him that Steve pretty much couldn’t stand it anymore. Bucky’s right hand had come up and was lightly touching him under his shirt—rubbing his waist and stomach, then squeezing his waist a little harder so that, quite stupidly, Steve felt like Bucky had a grip on all of him. The sharp tenderness on his waist and dick, and then the milder sense of Bucky’s weight on top of his feet and legs—it all made him feel kind of pinned. He wasn’t, of course, but it was like there was nowhere to go to get away from it. It was all sensation.

Like that wasn’t enough, Bucky’s metal hand took Steve’s hand off his face and squeezed it, and Steve had to look at him. Bucky made eye contact with him, coolly—well, no, not coolly, that was bullshit. It felt like Bucky was looking all the way down inside him. Bucky slid his mouth forward until he’d taken in almost all of Steve, then pulled back a little, still watching him carefully. He pulled Steve’s hips up toward him, and raised his eyebrows expectantly, and Steve couldn’t help thrusting frantically up into his throat.

Bucky pulled off at the last minute so Steve came on his face. He’d mentioned that he didn’t have a gag reflex anymore, so Steve thought that Bucky just liked having Steve’s come on him—which really got to him, somehow, crunched something inside him, and just as he was thinking how much he loved Bucky, Bucky slowly and deliberately wiped his face off all over Steve’s khakis. “Oh, look, now you have to put them in the laundry,” he said.

“You’re impossible,” Steve said.

“Pretty big talk for a guy who wears khakis,” Bucky said. Steve lifted his hips up so Bucky could peel the khakis off him, wad them up, and throw them out the door of Steve’s room. He missed and they hit the wall, so he scrambled up to grab them again and throw them as far down the hallway as they would go.

“Bucky,” Steve said, knowing he was whining a little. “Come back.”

“You want me to?” Bucky said.

Ugh. “ _Please_ , Buck.”

That did it. Bucky jumped on the bed and crawled up onto Steve like an overaffectionate sheepdog. He nuzzled his neck and kissed him, sloppily, all along his jaw and cheekbones and up into his hair.

“What about my mouth,” Steve complained.

“Oh, that,” Bucky said. He kissed it. “You are fun,” he said. “I wouldn’t...I won’t pretend you’re not. You’re a lot of fun.”

“I know,” Steve said. “Lemme hold you.” Bucky squeezed his eyes shut; Steve was pretty sure this was one of his favorite things, but he was weird and fussy about it. Steve turned onto his side and pulled Bucky close, so his face was pressed into Steve’s chest and Steve’s arm was half over Bucky’s face.

“ _Oh_ ,” Bucky said quietly. He pushed his face in, and Steve squeezed him a little tighter. It was so nice, and Steve was about as close to letting loose with genuine sweet talk as he’d ever been. But that wasn’t really all that close.


	3. Bad News Breakers

Steve dozed off a little—he wasn’t sure if it was just a few minutes, or closer to an hour. It wasn’t all day or anything. Bucky was talking to him.

“It’s okay if you get pissy about this, Steve, but it’s really important. I have to be able to trust you. Are you awake?”

Steve pulled himself back into alertness. Bucky was razor-eyed, and he’d pulled back so they were just lying on their sides facing each other, but his hand was gently stroking on the side of Steve’s neck. “Yeah, okay.”

“You have to promise, Steve. I’m not losing this. I won’t.”

“I promise,” Steve said. He wasn’t thoughtless, he just knew that he’d keep any promise he made to Bucky.

“You have to kill me if Hydra ever takes me again. Don’t gamble on thinking you can save me or anything, ‘cause even if you do, I don’t want to go through it again. Promise?”

“Okay,” Steve said. He didn’t like it, but knowing what he knew about what it was like, he couldn’t really argue with Bucky, either.

“I don’t think that lady, Russell, is going to try to take me. But it just...I’ve had it on my mind. Getting brained with my arm _was_ funny, but I don’t want to make a lifestyle of it again, you know? Once was enough.”

“What?” Steve blinked at him. “Russell isn’t gonna try to take you?”

“What, you think she will try and take me? Even though she’s got robots and stuff? I don’t think she needs to; she’s not sentimental—doesn’t see me the way I see her—and she’s probably gonna be stronger than even we are, if she gets herself done.”

“Well, yeah...” Steve said, and then, “oh. Bucky—shit, I’m sorry, I never explained the mission. You’re worrying for no reason. You’re not going on the mission with me, I’m going by myself.”

“Wait, what?” Bucky said. “You’re going after her by yourself? Are you shitting me?”

“Well, yeah,” Steve said.

“Is that what _Fury_ wanted? He didn’t want us both to go?” Bucky was still lying in Steve’s arms, his body quiet and lazy, but his face was all the way alert.

“Well, no—or if he did, he must have known I wouldn’t hear of it. It just doesn’t make sense. You aren’t ready, you haven’t been training—”

“I haven’t been _training_?”

“What, you’re saying you have been?”

“Steve...” Bucky sighed. “I don’t need to train. You got no idea what they did to me, did you? A kitten would be dangerous with this arm.”

“Then put it on a kitten and send it with me, ‘cause I’m not taking you.”

Bucky laughed perfunctorily and said, “But seriously, Steve, it’s just wasteful—yeah, I have no plans of making what you do a career, I had enough of it, but why would you go alone when it’s so easy for me to help you?”

“It’s not _easy_ ,” Steve said. “You just asked me to be ready to kill you, a minute ago.”

“If they take me again, I said. I had to ask, but they’re never gonna be able to do it, which is their own fault for making me so strong.”

“I’m stronger than you,” Steve said.

“And you’re not fighting against me so I don’t see what that has to do with it. Besides, you might be physically stronger, but that means fuck all, that’s not what I’m talking about.” He waited for Steve to ask what he was talking about, but Steve wasn’t too interested in arguing. “ _Can_ I tell you what I’m talking about?”

“Who’s stopping you?” Steve asked.

“You,” Bucky said. “I’m saying, someone like you will say, ‘My job is my life,’ and you mean you care about it or something. But you have a name and you sleep in a bed. Your _life_ is your life, which makes you less effective.”

“You’re effective because you weren’t a person,” Steve said.

“You sound like you don’t believe me, but they wouldn’t have done it if it didn’t work. I’m always gonna be more singleminded than almost anyone, and no amount of soft living can make that wear off.”

Steve didn’t have anything to say, mostly because he had no idea if what Bucky was saying was true or not. He found he didn’t care that much now. “What’s the harm in trying?” he asked.

“No harm, believe me, I’m enjoying this stuff—as I _just_ told you. But it’s safer for you if I’m there, Steve. Why won’t you let me be there?”

“No,” Steve said. “No matter how good you are, I just don’t like the thought of you going back out and fighting again. That’s what—” He willed the words to freeze in his throat, but he was too slow.

“That’s what?” Bucky said. “Going back in and fighting with—”

“Just leave it,” Steve said. He was thinking a few things, that he maybe always believed but rarely allowed to float to the surface. That the first time around Bucky already had been half broken, and—had Steve seen it? His memories were so tinted with later learning that it was hard to tell. Maybe he’d known, and just thought it was worth the sacrifice. Either way, he’d let Bucky keep fighting when he maybe could have made him go home; and either way, he’d given him up for dead the second time around. He was thinking, _I didn’t protect you, I let all of that happen, but I can protect you the third time around_.

Bucky wasn’t idealistic or bullheaded except when Steve made him be that way. He just wanted to enjoy life and that’s what he deserved to be doing, not running around after Steve cleaning up all his selfish messes.

But Steve was waiting for Bucky to push back on him, anyway. They’d go back and forth a while but Steve planned to hang on and it wouldn’t be hard to dig his teeth in. Not with Bucky lying next to him looking so safe and relaxed—well, not so relaxed anymore, but Steve could remember. He’d quit talking, as if Steve was going to just drop it.

“You’re not going,” Steve said.

Bucky sighed and raked his right hand through his hair. “Guess I’m not,” he said. “I’m gonna wash up and go to bed. Goodnight, Steve.”

He got up and went out of the room, leaving Steve to wonder what he was playing at. He didn’t kiss Steve or anything, which he usually did, so Steve was wondering if that was supposed to make him sorry, or if Bucky was going to stalk back in and start sounding off.

When he realized Bucky wasn’t coming back Steve went into the bathroom, scoffed at Bucky’s nearly pristine toothbrush sitting next to his in the little toothbrush holder, and started his own routine. He kind of liked how Bucky was obsessed with hygiene when it came to how he looked, but couldn’t be bothered to brush his teeth or eat a vegetable once in a while.

After he did his mouthwash and flossed he went and knocked on the door of Bucky’s room. Bucky didn’t usually have the door shut, either. After a minute Bucky opened the door and stepped out and leaned against the wall in the hallway, looking at Steve.

Steve didn’t spend much time in Bucky’s room—usually they talked on the couch or at the kitchen table, or if a bed was called for, Steve’s was bigger. Steve wouldn’t have wanted to share a room for several reasons, even if Bucky could sleep in a bed; and since he couldn’t, how would that even work? It wouldn’t really feel like sharing if Bucky was sleeping in Steve’s closet. Bucky had never brought it up, anyway. Steve had thought at first maybe it would be important to Bucky to have his own room, that no one else went into or looked into. But while Bucky spent a fair amount of time in there alone—mostly working on the computer stuff, Steve thought—he nearly always left the door open, and he’d invite Steve in without a second thought.

Now, for the first time, it felt like Bucky was actively trying to keep Steve from seeing inside his room. He stepped out carefully through a sliver of door and closed it behind him. He’d obviously just thrown some clothes on and his face was a little marked up, although that wasn’t exactly unusual and would fade away in a minute which was why he did it so freely.

Steve waited until Bucky said, fairly pleasantly, “What is it?”

“Well, I mean—” Steve said, and waited again.

“What is it?” Bucky said. “You knocked on my door.”

“Well, you stopped arguing,” Steve said, feeling stupid.

“You told me to,” Bucky said.

“So?” Steve said. Bucky raised his eyebrows at him. His face hardened a little when Steve said, “Oh.”

Steve reached out to touch his arm and Bucky stepped back neatly away from him, then looked steadily at Steve like he was daring him to say something about it.

“I didn’t realize,” Steve said. “I didn’t—” Bucky widened his eyes at him; his mouth was disappearing inside itself. “What is it? Is there something you can’t say?” Bucky breathed out angrily. “Can you—”

“You could tell me I’m allowed to argue with you,” Bucky said. “You could tell me you didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

“Of course I didn’t,” Steve said.

“And?” Bucky spread his palms out, stiffly. He was vibrating with impatience.

“And is that why you stopped, because—”

“ _You still didn’t say it_ ,” Bucky said.

“What. ‘You’re allowed to argue with me.’ You really need me to—”

If possible Bucky was glowering even more. He shook his head and shoulders and started, “You _might_ make it through on your own, but it’s just stupid for you to take the risk. It’d be easier and safer with me there, it’d be faster, and the only reason you’re against it is some kind of typical bullshit that you really need to have grown out of by now. And maybe some kind of extra new typical bullshit about me not being able to take care of myself.” Steve just opened his mouth and Bucky said, “Jesus Christ, give it a rest, okay? Yes, I needed permission, leave me the fuck alone. You can’t just keep everything away from me until I turn back into the old one! Because I won’t, it’s torture—you’re just saying I can’t do what I want because I’m not _him_.”

“It’s not like that,” Steve said.

“Bullshit and you know it. The only way you can win the argument is by shutting me up again.”

“God, you think I did that on purpose?”

“No,” Bucky said and sighed, tipping his head back against the wall. “No, I know you—I know you want me argumentative.” His voice was reedy and he sounded as close to breaking down as he ever had, except when he’d had the apple.

“There’s not a way I want you, Buck.”

“Bullshit to that too.” Bucky brought his chin back down so he could look at Steve. “Wanting me free to be how I want, wanting me to not have these problems—that is wanting something from me. And I work pretty fucking hard and it’s not all for you either—even though by rights I shouldn’t want things for myself but yeah, I know I can, shut up—but it’s never gonna be easy and that’s not—“ All the fight seemed to go out of him as he spoke and he slumped against the wall. “It’s not, well...I just don’t like it,” he finished, weakly. Steve reached out for him, again, and Bucky put his palms up. “No.”

“Sorry,” Steve said.

“Not your fault I’m pissy,” Bucky said.

“Sorry to be an asshole, ‘cause I’m about to be an asshole,” Steve said.

“Oh, a once in a lifetime event,” Bucky said.

“It’s just it’s—you have actually changed since you got back, don’t you think? You’re pretty good at telling me not to touch you, and I don’t think you would have done that at first. You wouldn’t have told me I was an asshole, either.”

“Great,” Bucky said, “so do I get a party for doing something that’s completely normal for everyone else who’s a real person and not whatever the fuck I am?”

“I thought you liked parties,” said Steve.

“I wish I was more like him,” Bucky said. “The wrong soldier. I mean I got no interest in hurting people, but this...looking so much like your friend, talking like him and shit, it just pisses me off sometimes.”

“There’s a lot in between the two of you,” Steve said.

“Right.”

“But there’s a lot in between you and the wrong soldier, too.”

“No,” Bucky said. “Not really. Sure, I—what’d you say, that I can build that stuff back up? Yeah, okay, maybe there’s a whole lot I can build _over_ him, but he’s still at the bottom. For better or worse. And as much stuff as I might build, if anything happens and I need to be the wrong soldier again—all that stuff can just get swept aside.”

“I know you think that,” Steve said. He immediately knew it was one of the worst things he could have said; Bucky’d already been stiff, but his jaw clenched further.

“Oh, I see,” he said coldly. “I mean, that’s—it’s just what _I_ think. How could something like me know what I can do?”

Steve at least had the sense not to correct him.

“Let me show you something,” Bucky said.

He pulled his shirt down to reveal the scar tissue on his chest and shoulder. This was puzzling, because there was nothing to show—Steve had seen the scars plenty of times, and just recently, of course, he’d begun getting even more familiar with them.

“You probably wondered why there’s scars,” Bucky said, “when I don’t and you don’t scar anywhere else. You probably wanted to ask before but you were being polite and all that.”

“I guess,” Steve said.

“It’s because I spent so many years trying to pry it off myself, before it settled on me—peeling the skin back, trying to pick down under the metal. There’s no under the metal, of course. I was confused about that. It doesn’t come off, you know?” He took Steve’s hand and pulled his fingers tight against the place where the metal started. “It’s not a bad arm, in my opinion—not anymore, anyway. But it doesn’t come off.”


	4. Scams and Flams

Steve was lying in the side of a hillside—not hiding from anyone, yet, just watching—when he heard his phone ring. Fury had given him a phone that only he could hear, although he probably expected Steve would use it for more important things than just texting with Sam and Bucky. But it was Steve’s first mission since Bucky had come back, and he couldn’t help worrying.

_so I fucked up again_ , Sam had texted accompanied by a picture of Bucky holding a bottle of pomegranate juice and making what Sam said was called a duckface.

_Is he okay?_ Steve texted back, although he figured Bucky wouldn’t be making duckface if he wasn’t.

_just can’t talk, he can nod/headshake/point so it’s all good_

_You guys going home?_ The picture looked like they were in some kind of food court or cafeteria.

Steve received a blank text for his trouble.

_I’m just asking, Buck—if you feel good staying out like that, I’m happy for you._

_[ ]_

_It’s fine. Nothing even happened yet. Didn’t find her._

_[ ]_

_And no, it’s not because I walk too loud. That’s what you’re thinking at me, isn’t it? Stop worrying_ , Steve sent, and then texted, _That is—I don’t think you should worry._

_stop using up my phone bill! he can’t even write!_ Sam texted. _what happened between you two anyway? He’s acting weird._

Steve couldn’t explain what had happened; he just knew that Bucky wasn’t pleased with him, in a silent, polite, crackly way.

Steve tried not to feel angry about it. But really, trying not to do that was the road to madness. Bucky had even told him that before—“you’re the only person I can get mad at, so it wouldn’t kill you to return the favor.” That was when his hair gel exploded on Steve’s expensive high tech toothbrush.

Bucky was sure exercising his ability to be angry at Steve. He wasn’t saying much about it, and he acted friendly enough when Steve talked to him. But he just held back a little; he rarely started conversations and he didn’t do stuff like bothering Steve while he was reading. He definitely didn’t try to get in the shower with him or anything like that.

Steve hadn’t been aware of how much he liked that until it went away. It wasn’t the sex particularly—it was how pushy Bucky was about being close, getting touched, getting paid attention to. Steve knew it wasn’t anything special about him that made Bucky so eager for those things, but it was an honor to be trusted to provide it. Things just felt a little more quiet and bare without Bucky tackling him in the kitchen to kiss him, or poking his head into Steve’s room to complain about the people on _Jersey Shore_.

There were only a few days of this—between Steve telling Bucky about the mission, and when the mission started—but it was hard to get through. Steve just had to hope that when he got back from the mission Bucky would have gotten over it. Steve was right, after all.

It picked at him, though, feeling like he had taken advantage of Bucky’s compliance. He didn’t want to control Bucky, that was the last thing he wanted, but Steve could hardly be expected to take that to a ridiculous extreme. He wasn’t going to give Bucky chances over and over— _you sure you’re not going to come with me? It’s okay if you do something I don’t want. Good, even._ Because it _wouldn’t_ be good if Bucky came with him. It was a stupid idea, and Steve couldn’t help if Bucky was especially easy to shoot down.

Not shooting him down was just something Steve had already done enough. Every murder the Soldier had committed could ultimately be traced back to what Steve hadn’t done for Bucky. Steve would be damned if he was going to let Bucky come on back again into fighting and killing. He didn’t think Bucky had ever wanted it.

Steve laid on the hillside for a while. He wasn’t stupid enough to waste time staring at Bucky’s empty text message, but he was trying to hear and feel the vibrations of the base inside. It might help if he could tell which areas of the building were emptier; he could come at Russell through those areas, and Fury had made it sound like her robots wouldn’t be able to do anything once she was dead. They were all directly animated by her, so if he killed her before he encountered them he’d be set.

Of course, they weren’t human so they could be filling every hall and room, ready to act, without making a sound or a minor movement. They were quieter even than nobody.

Steve wasn’t sure if the robots or the building—or Grace herself, augmented as she was—might be able to hear his phone. He turned it off and crawled quietly along the side of the hillside, where he knew the entrance was. He appreciated that Fury had been very specific about where the entrance was and how to get in. It required a retinal scan, but Steve, God help him, came bearing the retina of a Hydra agent.

He took the retina out in its little case and looked around for the slit in the telephone-box sized metal cube at the back of the hill. If you didn’t pay attention to it, it just seemed like some kind of maintenance building. Most people wouldn’t think anything of it if they were just hiking or picnicking on the hill.

And wasn’t that a thing to think of—people having a picnic, thinking they were alone, when they were right next to Hydra. Steve hoped none of those people had stumbled onto the truth, seen a Hydra agent exiting the cube or just gotten too close to the cube themselves.

Steve held the retina up to the little slit. For a moment nothing happened, and then the front wall of the cube slid aside, revealing…the inside of a cube. Like Fury had said, it was an elevator compartment. It wasn’t too appealing to begin his mission by closing himself in a box, but Steve took his shield off and, holding it close to his body so they could fit, stepped inside the box and stood still.

The wall slid back over him and he stood there in darkness until the compartment started moving. It wasn’t going down, like a normal elevator—it was moving sideways, and ever so slightly up. In a moment, the wall in front of him slid open again and he was facing a long, brightly lit hallway.

The whole thing gave Steve a weird feeling of being a piece in a board game. Maybe it was just the oddly specific movements of the elevator—maybe this was the only place it transported you to—but he felt like a big hand had just picked him up and carried him to this hallway. There also was the fact that the hallway had a dead end and only one door, about halfway down on the left. That seemed like a purposefully intimidating use of space, not a practical one.

But there was nothing else Steve could do but walk toward the door, so he did. He had only made it a few steps before it disappeared—he looked down for a moment and when he looked back, it was gone. Instead there was a door a little further along the hall on the right side.

This time, Steve kept his eyes on the door, barely blinking. It was still there when he reached it. He opened it—inside was another little cell like the one he’d just been in. Well, it was smaller. Bucky would step right in there and take a nap.

This was—well, it was possible that this was how agents normally entered the base, but it seemed needlessly complicated and confusing. Steve couldn’t help but wonder if the building was screwing with him. Still, there wasn’t anything else he could do but step inside the little cell.

The door slammed before he could close it and he felt himself moving again, this time up. When the door opened, he was standing on the top of the hill.

“Aw, shit,” he said. He tried to pull the door closed on himself again, but the little capsule shook until he was forced to step out. It retracted into the hill and a mask of grassy earth closed over it. “Well if that’s the way you’re going to do it,” Steve said.

If the base was smart enough to do something like that, Steve wasn’t going to be able to sneak in, and it knew he was there anyway. He’d have to physically break into the base.

It wasn’t like he had never run through a wall before. He didn’t think he’d run through a wall with who knew how much solid earth on top of it, though. He figured the best thing to do would be to throw his shield at the hill a few times and see if it got through to the wall of the base.

This would probably be easier if he wasn’t alone. Not that Bucky knew the base much better. He’d made a point of telling Steve he’d been kept there once—just another in a long list of reasons why Steve was stupid not to bring him along—but it wasn’t like Bucky knew how to get around the base when it was being completely controlled by someone’s mind. Even Fury had given him incomplete information.

It would have been wrong, hauling Bucky out again—but, yeah, it would have been easier. Steve got his foot caught on a root and had to verbally tell himself not to wrench his foot out. Sometimes he lost his temper and he’d pulled up a small tree doing that before. Although anything that broke up the ground here would probably be okay.

Steve realized there weren’t any trees on this part of the hill. He looked down and a bunch of thick metal fingers were holding onto his foot.

“Sorry, but you left yourself wide open for that,” the fingers said. It wasn’t exactly like a person’s voice—it had the quality of a computer generated one, yet it somehow had the cadence of real speech. Steve planted his left foot so he could get leverage to yank the right one free, but he couldn’t get free of the fingers. He pulled harder—he could have pulled up a _large_ tree, damn it—and felt a jolt of panic when once again, he couldn’t wrench out. What the hell was anchoring them under the earth?

“Wow, you’re really strong,” another set of fingers said, popping out of the ground and grabbing his left foot. “Neat!”

Steve had already gotten his phone out, but it took forever to turn on. It was great that Fury had given him this special phone but shouldn’t a really special phone be able to turn on quickly? As Steve watched a little icon rotate on the phone screen, the ground cracked open and the fingers started pulling him down. “Nice, really literary, Dr. Russell,” Steve said, but they were pulling him fast. His phone turned on and he clicked frantically on the last number he’d called.

“Again?” Sam said. “Aren’t you on a mission?”

“Put Bucky on.”

There was a pause. “I got you,” Sam said. Bless his heart, he didn’t remind Steve that Bucky couldn’t talk. There was rustling and then silence.

Steve was in the ground up his thighs. “Hey,” he said. “You’re right, I’m wrong, please get here as soon as you can. I’m screwed. I have no idea what’s going to happen.” More silence, of course.

Steve heard Sam say, “Shit,” then, “Steve, we can get there in—eight hours, Bucky has supplies on him, just hang on, okay? Maybe faster. You just have to get through the next eight hours.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said. “It’s not that bad.” He dropped the phone, but not before he heard a familiar exasperated sigh. “But get here!” he yelled, hoping Bucky and Sam could hear him. His torso was sticking out of the hillside; he threw himself on the ground, clinging and digging the shield in like an ice pick. “ _Fuck_.” Of course, as soon as he did that more fingers sprouted up and grabbed his arms. “Are you kidding me?” he yelled.

“This is great,” the fingers said, “you’re a helpful kind of guy, aren’t you, Captain?” The split in the hill got longer, just as long as he was tall, and he could see a lot more metal arms and hands reaching up to the surface. But once they got him in they didn’t need to pull him; he fell from the ceiling of the room he was in. Then the arms all slithered over him and held him tight.


	5. Start Without Me

It felt like days before Steve actually met Grace in person, but she claimed it was only five hours. “What, you think I’d starve you?” she said, when Steve woke up in the wide, sprawling chamber she used as a lab. It looked like she’d knocked down all the walls between three or four rooms. Grace was a ways away from Steve and with the robots holding him, sitting with his back against a wall, he could only see her out of the corner of his eye. She was bustling around something—he couldn’t see it well enough to parse anything more than a big hunk of chrome.

“Sorry I’m not much of a cook,” she said, “I’ve pretty much been living on sandwiches and canned soup, but you know. If I’m really absorbed in a project I don’t care.”

“What’s your current project?” Steve asked.

“Well, that’s not really your business,” Grace said. “Scratch that. What I’ve been working on isn’t your business. My brand new, _current_ current project is definitely your business—it’s you!”

“Oh, rapture,” Steve said.

“Well, I thought it was best to pull off the Band-Aid,” Grace said. There was a ding, and Steve could blurrily see her getting a mug of soup out of the microwave. “I’m keeping your limbs and organs, but your consciousness won’t be around much longer. I think if I really get down to it I can have the recipients ready in just a few days.”

Well, a few days was more than enough time to figure things out, Steve thought, especially with reinforcements.

“I know that seems like a lot of time to escape, but I don’t really think you’re going anywhere,” Grace said, blowing on the soup. “I’m just gonna cut your spinal cord in a minute, which will save me a lot of work keeping you restrained—”

“Oh, great idea, cutting up somebody you want to harvest parts from,” Steve said.

“I wasn’t born yesterday,” Grace said. “I know you’ll heal.”

“I never got my spinal cord cut, so no, you don’t know,” Steve said.

“Right, right,” Grace said. “Captain, I know you’re technically old enough to be my granddad, but practically, you’ve got to admit I have a lot more life experience than you.”

She came over to him then with the mug of soup. In her bearing, and even sort of in her appearance, Grace reminded him of a lot of women he’d grown up with. She was brisk and pleasant; she had shoulder-length gray hair and was wearing jeans and a sweater with the sleeves rolled up.

“You’re not the first supersoldier I’ve met, and with the first one, there weren’t any ethical issues,” she said. Her hand on the mug was metal—Grace’s left arm looked like the arms that had grabbed Steve, which was to say it didn’t have the same texture or the exact color of Bucky’s metal arm. But it was still disconcerting to see someone else with a metal arm.

It probably would have been a little less disconcerting if it was anyone else.

“Come on,” Grace said. She held the soup up to Steve’s mouth impatiently, and he glared at her. She couldn’t seriously think he was going to drink it. “Really?” she said. She flicked her eyes, an almost imperceptible movement; and several arms which had been lying on the floor picked themselves up and scurried over to Steve. The arms climbed over each other until they could reach Steve’s face, and Grace handed off the mug to them. She stood back and watched while one of the hands held Steve’s nose shut.

For a former asthmatic, he turned out to be surprisingly affected by having his air supply cut off. Obviously, he knew that just staying still would help him last longer, and so would staying calm. He couldn’t help staying still but it was pretty hard to stay calm. He felt his heart racing. He wondered if he needed more air than non powered people. He’d never thought about this before.

Steve’s muscles had been relaxed for a long time. He’d already learned pretty definitively that he couldn’t overpower the arms or the other robots under Grace’s control. He’d figured there was no point tiring himself out, in case he got a chance to do something. At the same time, just sitting there felt frighteningly like giving up. It all reminded him of his dream, the one he could never stop having for long—trapped, frozen, while horrible things went on without him.

Steve’s mouth opened and a hand poured soup inside. He was trying to gasp in air, so he choked and spit it up all over his chin and neck. It wasn’t hot; Grace had waited, probably in case he tried to spit it at her. He looked up at her.

“Oh no, not the strong silent type,” she said in a friendly way. “Well, you won’t die if you don’t eat for a few days, but still, why be uncomfortable? You do need to have water.” She looked like she was thinking and then the arms put the mug of soup down and dragged themselves away to the other side of the lab.

“Look, Captain,” Grace said, “when I want to kill you or drug you, or anything else, I can just inject you. Nothing you can do about it. I’m not offering you poisoned food or water.”

Steve thought about it. Once upon a time he’d been confident in his ability to smell if something was drugged (or taste, if it came down to it), but now they made drugs even he couldn’t sense. But it was true about the injections, and even though it didn’t make sense for Grace to feed him, the choice was obvious. He could eat and drink, with some probable monkey’s paw; or he could undoubtedly become too weak to do anything.

“I’ll take the soup,” he said.

“Good!” Grace said. She seemed genuinely pleased. She picked the mug up and held it to Steve’s mouth again; that was almost more than he could bear, having to eat out of her hand. He reminded himself he couldn’t rush her. He’d have to figure out something else. He drank and swallowed the soup, and the arms came back carrying a canteen.

“Do you need me to be in good shape when you kill me?” he asked.

“No, not really,” Grace said.

“Then why do you care?”

She made a face at him. “Basic ethics? What, just because we have different opinions you think I have to be evil? Drink the water.” He started drinking it, and she went off again to where he couldn’t see what she was doing.

There was more soup in a little while. The arms fed it to him and Grace came over with a little robot in her arms. It looked like a spider—the kind Fury had told him about and showed him pictures of. Grace must be moving fast, since she’d switched almost all the way to using the arms from using the spiders. Fury’s intel hadn’t been very old.

Grace sat in a chair across from him and opened the robot—right in the middle of its back, like cracking a nut. She tinkered around in it, using her metal fingers like pliers. “So, I’m curious,” she said. “I’m sure not complaining—you’re a great specimen. This is like Christmas, you showing up. Can’t think of anyone I would have rather had waltzing in here—any _body_ , har har—but I thought you’d been out of action for a while. Nobody’s heard much about you since the Triskelion. Certainly haven’t heard about you trying to hunt down anyone else from Hydra.”

“I’d think my reasons would be obvious,” Steve said.

“What?” she said. “I’m not the one who killed Barnes, you know.”

Steve stared at her.

“That’s really it?” she said. “Hey, I was born in 1952—the body was probably already empty by then.” She spread her hands, both greasy from the inside of the robot. “You’re not against stem cell research, are you? I wasn’t hurting anyone. The resource was there.” Steve was at a loss for words; he didn’t know what Grace saw in his face, but it made her impatient. “Look, I’m sorry if you don’t think it’s tasteful, but just because the Winter Soldier was made out of your friend doesn’t mean my team and I should have let him go to waste. It’s like being offended if I use your dead friend’s picture to prop open a door. It doesn’t hurt him, and there’s a net gain.”

“It doesn’t hurt him,” Steve repeated.

“N-o,” Grace said, drawing the word out with frustration. She widened her eyes at Steve, disbelieving. “I told you, I have an ethical code. I won’t hurt you. _Harm_ you, sure, by all means, but that’s unavoidable—and when it comes to the Soldier, of _course_ I didn’t hurt him—there’s no one in there.”

“Oh, so he wasn’t screaming or anything,” Steve said. “You never had to hit him in the face to get him to stop screaming.”

Grace was unconcerned. “That was just a malfunction,” she said. “The body had lots of leftover reflexes like that. But eventually we found ways to clear of those things out, except the ones that are actually useful, like breathing.” She squinted into the robot’s innards. “I really have to work on these eyes,” she said. “They’re downgrading. Anyway, how do you know about the screaming? He told you?” She glanced up at Steve, then went back to what she was doing. “He’s a master manipulator. I thought we managed to tone that down, but I guess not. This bother you?” Grace popped a piece out of the robot and held it between her fingers like a cigarette. She shook it at Steve. “Does this bother you? You’re probably relating to this robot right now, aren’t you?”

“Only so far as I’m gonna be in its place pretty soon,” Steve said.

Grace chuckled. “The human brain’s an amazing thing,” she said. “People see personalities in rocks, even—I can’t imagine the evolutionary benefit of that, but there has to be one.  Yeah, if the Soldier’s been putting on his little show for you I’m not surprised you’re here. You don’t know how many techs came crying to me, like, ‘Grace! We’ve made a mistake! The Winter Soldier can feel pain!’” She put on a whiny voice and wiggled her fingers, flicking a little grease from the inside of the robot. “Anyway, don’t let me talk your ear off.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Steve asked.

///

A couple of meals passed; Steve wasn’t sure how often Grace was feeding him. He usually had an excellent internal clock, but being underground made things harder. She hadn’t slept yet, which didn’t necessarily mean anything; maybe she didn’t need to sleep.

“I really have to piss,” Steve informed her.

Grace sniffed. She was a room’s length away from him, going back and forth between a large computer and several metal boxes. There were things in the boxes, but Steve couldn’t see what was in there. They were making noise. “That’s the oldest trick in the book,” she said. “Feel free to piss yourself, I won’t be offended.”

He did. She wasn’t. Steve was uncomfortable, but figured it would dry. It made him think about the last time he and Bucky had touched each other—how Bucky had wrapped around him, pushed his way into the shower. Bucky loved taking showers with him.

He was really meticulous about his looks and grooming, even when he didn’t seem to care if he was hungry or his arm was hurting him. Steve remembered what nobody had said about it not being necessary to go to the bathroom. Bucky’d probably wet himself and worse a million times, including when he wasn’t nobody; and that would bother Bucky a lot more than it would bother someone like Steve.

It was worth considering, Steve figured, that he might never see Bucky or Sam or anyone else again. He wasn’t exactly unused to accepting his impending death. But this time around, actually, he wasn’t considering it all that hard.

He never wanted Bucky to be involved in this. He felt guilty even now that Bucky would have to come get him—that he’d have to see Grace, yeah, but even that he was having to be any kind of fighter at all. But that was pretty much the reason he hadn’t wanted Bucky to come along—because he didn’t want it to happen to him. It wasn’t really that he ever thought Bucky couldn’t do it.

One thing was that the way people talked about the Soldier—even the way Bucky talked about the Soldier—made him seem indestructible. Steve had felt that way, even—physically he could just barely have taken him, but the way the Soldier kept coming wasn’t just disarming in a practical sense. It was eerie enough to be confusing and overwhelming, because he just didn’t quit when you would expect any human being to. When they made Bucky feel he was dead, he wasn’t a person, he was “it”—well, they weren’t just fucking around. It was a highly effective method. So even if Steve didn’t know how anyone could even get into the building, a part of him insisted that he could trust the Soldier to succeed no matter what.

The other thing was more stupid and sentimental. It was just an expectation, born out of habit, that Bucky would always come for him.

Of course, there were exceptions to every rule, and some beliefs just came out of a failure to face reality. But still, Steve wasn’t as worried as he should have been.

Besides, there was no point worrying, although he did panic when Grace cut his spinal cord. She gave him a local anesthetic first, so it didn’t hurt—but honestly, that might have been better. He couldn’t even feel what was happening, and then he couldn’t move at all below the neck.

He knew perfectly well he’d heal if he lived long enough.

After Grace cut his spinal cord and gave him some more food and water, she walked over behind her lab tables with the pile of arms crawling after her. She disappeared behind the table, and Steve watched as fairly slowly the arms arranged themselves at posts around the doors of the lab. They laid down there like they were going to sleep. Grace apparently was too—Steve heard no movement from behind the lab table. There weren’t any arms around him anymore. It would be a great time to get up if he wasn’t paralyzed.

Well, at least he _thought_ there weren’t any arms around him. He couldn’t feel anything. He looked down and saw an arm in his lap, folded up and apparently attempting to scale his torso.

Before Steve could react (how, exactly?) the arm launched itself into the air and looped over his neck. It hung over him like a scarf and the hand clapped over his mouth. “Don’t say anything, dummy,” the elbow whispered into his ear.

Steve was about to protest that he wasn’t stupid enough to say anything, but he realized that would undercut his point.

“So,” the arm continued softly, “can you hear me? Nod or shake your head.” Steve nodded. “Well, we can’t get into the building, Sam’s working on it, but for now I hacked in and synced my arm up with this guy. Only this guy, so don’t go getting buddy-buddy with any of the other arms. They’re all Russell.”

Steve bumped his face up into the arm, the way Bucky sometimes rubbed his face against Steve’s hand or shoulder.

“Hey yourself,” Bucky said, “and I realize it’s not the time to say I told you so, but when it is I’m gonna really enjoy it. Anyway, I think now I’m in this arm things should be fine. I mean she has about ten times as many body parts as other people, so me being here is just like one of her toes falling asleep. If I don’t do anything to get her attention she probably won’t notice she can’t control this arm. That is”—he laughed—”until she realizes she can’t control it. But it’s better if _you_ know which one is me. Hold onto the bicep so I can scratch a mark on myself or something.”

Steve didn’t do anything.

“What?” Bucky said. “You’re not tied up. She’s got you in here with a force field or something, yeah?” Steve shook his head. There was a pause. “You’re drugged?” Steve shook his head again. “I’m starting to think I’m a better nonverbal communicator than you are,” Bucky said, “because I have no idea what you’re trying to say. Okay, just whisper it into my hand.”

“Spinal cord injury,” Steve said. There was a longer pause.

“Okay,” Bucky said. “How high? C6? C4? Sounds like you can still breathe on your own.”

“I don’t know what those numbers mean. Uh. Shoulders?”

“Okay. Hmm. That’s usually a three day vacation for me, but I know you heal at least twice as fast as I do, so—two days, I bet, and it’ll be like it never happened. And we’ll have you out by then, so don’t worry about a thing. It’s gonna be like fish in a barrel for me, so just—”

“I’m fine, Bucky,” Steve said.

“Shut up,” Bucky said. “Stop talking, you’ll wake her up. Anyway, I don’t need physical backup so this is no problem—better, even, you won’t be jumping in my way all the time while I’m trying to do stuff. I would like if you can distract her though, ‘cause none of this stuff is on autopilot. It’s not hard work for her but if she’s talking, or you surprise her, the robots _are_ gonna be less effective.” Steve nodded. “It wouldn’t kill you to get some sleep either. What, you can’t fall asleep when you’re paralyzed in an underground base with a lady who has thirty metal arms that crawl around like snakes and are super strong? You need a feather bed or some shit?” Bucky laughed at his own joke. Steve bumped his face into the arm again. “Okay, okay, this isn’t the Tunnel of Love,” Bucky said, “and there’s no point just sitting here making small talk. You’ll see me soon. Be distracting.”

Steve nodded. The hand of the arm climbed up his face and pushed some of his hair back along his forehead. Then the arm slid off his neck and down his body. It quietly pushed itself over to the nearest door, where it settled down alongside the others.


	6. The Rabbit Died

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: referenced animal death (you can see where my priorities lie given everything else that's going on)

So much for Grace letting Steve know everything that was going on. He fought his way up from drugged sleep, through a feeling like muddy water. He didn’t open his eyes. He was lying down—well, he thought he was, from his sense of his head and shoulders. He couldn’t feel the rest of his body, of course, but it felt like he was on a hard surface.

There was no point in letting her know he was awake. Bucky had mentioned that Steve healed twice as fast as him—Steve didn’t know how he knew that, but Bucky was always thinking about things. With any luck—not that he _had_ a lot of luck, but hey, it could happen—Grace’s calculations for drugging him would be based on how much she needed to knock out Bucky.

It made him a little sick to think of it. It didn’t matter, it was over, and Bucky would have scowled at him for being upset, especially when Steve’s own life was on the line. But it was hard to know that everything she did to him she’d done to Bucky first, and probably worse.

But he hoped that he’d find some advantage in the space between what each of their bodies could handle. So he pretended to be unconscious and listened to Grace move around the room, followed by the scraping of the arms and the banging of several heavy things being lugged across the floor. Grace was humming.

After what seemed like a long time Grace said, “I know you’re awake, Captain,” and after what seemed like a long time again, Steve opened his eyes. He was indeed lying on a table, and on tables around him were several large metal boxes. Inside them were a lot of wires, but also what looked like flesh and blood.

“Captain, meet your recipients,” Grace said. “They’ll keep your body parts working until I find the best machine or person for them to go to. I’m thinking of giving myself your liver—mine’s about to give out on me, I think. Too much fun when I was your age. And I know a great agent who could use your heart.” She tapped his chest, which was when he noticed he was nearly naked.

“Polite of you to leave my shorts on,” he said.

“Oh, that’s a new pair,” said Grace. “I washed you up. Well, my arms did. But there’s no reason to make things undignified, since I don’t need your genitals for anything.”

“What, nobody wants that transplant?”

“That would just be for novelty,” Grace said; “there’s no real use for it. What am I supposed to do, attach it to one of the spider-bots as a joke? And there’s no point harvesting your sperm, since there’s nothing special in your genes. They’re awful, in fact.”

“Don’t I know it,” Steve said.

“Well, your body’s perfect,” Grace said. Steve lifted his head and tried to watch her as she moved around, looking through the different boxes. She cocked her head to the side and one box, pulled by the arms, made its way to the table closest to Steve. It wasn’t as big as the other boxes. “It’s convenient, not having to test the function of anything, since I know every part of you is the gold standard,” Grace continued. “It’s great. Even though I can’t believe you gave up your life for the equivalent of a Furby.”

“What’s a Furby?” Steve asked. Sometimes it seemed like modern people would stop at nothing to explain pop culture references to him.

“Oh,” Grace said, “it was this toy for kids, in the nineties? My son had about four. They had these cute faces and they would make sounds and say ‘I love you’ and stuff like that.”

The arms were moving around Steve’s torso, pulling some kind of long instrument across his skin, but he didn’t feel it and could barely see it given the angle. Grace stood where Steve could see her, but she was watching the arms.

“I’d be up trying to get a glass of water and the damn things would start talking at me because they have motion sensors. Always startled the crap of me— _just_ like the Winter Soldier coming out of cryo.”

Steve glanced down at his body—the arms had moved down to his legs and were sweeping back and forth across the surface. “Excuse me?” he said. “So that’s—those fur things? That’s what you’re comparing Bucky to?”

“ _Bucky_ ,” Grace repeated, shaking her head. “Sounds like a name you’d give a guinea pig. Well, I don’t blame you for being taken in. Even agents I never really blamed—they’re not scientists, and he’s such a chatterbox if you don’t take steps to curb it. It’s disorienting. But it did annoy me when the techs would complain about it. They should have known better. Well, I set them straight.” She jerked her chin in the direction of Steve’s head, and the arms started climbing back up his body. They stopped on his chest, just laying themselves across it.

Well, wait. There was only one arm on his chest. Steve hoped it was the right one. “What did you tell them when they complained?” he asked.

“I’d just use lab animals to show them,” Grace said. She leaned back against the table behind her, bracing herself with her arms, looking down at him. “This _one_ tech—forget his name—just too inexperienced, I think, we shouldn’t have put him on the job. His brother was in a motorcycle accident, and he was telling me about it while we were operating on the Soldier. Several months later, we’re unthawing him, and it happens that this kid is the one to sit the Soldier in the chair. The Soldier looks up, fixes his eyes on the tech—”

“—and asked how his brother was.”

“And that’s something that the most basic AI can remember to ask you!” she exclaimed. “I tried to tell him, he’s not _really_ having a conversation with you, any more than you can have a conversation with a Magic 8-Ball. But he’d just snapped. He clearly thought the thing was a friend of his, just like—well, just like you do. So I had to bring in one of the lab rabbits.”

“I’m not following,” Steve said.

“Bear in mind, I wouldn’t normally kill an animal for no reason, but sometimes people just didn’t get it. ‘Oh, he’s so friendly! He understands everything I’m saying!’ So I’d take a lab rabbit and I’d give it to the Soldier to hold.” Grace was grinning at the memory. “Sometimes we’d have to tell him to pet it, but usually he’d do that on his own. Rabbits can be tricky to pet, but they’d just melt right into his arms.”

“His sister had a rabbit when we were kids.”

She shrugged. “Muscle memory. Anyway, we’d all stand there and look at this—I mean, it was pretty cute. The rabbits loved it. And the Soldier has such big, sensitive looking eyes. Your friend must have been quite the charmer.”

“So you all just stood there and watched Bucky pet a rabbit?” Steve said. “And that showed them—what?”

“ _Well_ ,” Grace said, “then I’d tell him to kill it. ‘Strangle it,’ I’d say, or, ‘Puncture its throat with your index finger.’ I’d tell him how to do it—fast or slow—or to scare it or make it suffer—you know they used him as an interrogator, many times. Sometimes he’d do something so disturbing the younger techs would actually turn green. The Soldier would kill the rabbit and just sit there holding it like nothing happened. And half the time—”

Steve realized that this had the rhythm of a story she’d told many times. Grace had fine-tuned the dialogue over many tellings, and she was happily coming up to the punchline.

“He started petting it again!” she said. “That really freaked out the techs. Sometimes they’d get up their courage to ask, ‘Why are you petting it?’ And if the Soldier happened to be able to talk, he’d answer: ‘ _Because it’s soft_.’” Grace looked expectantly at Steve.

“ _That_ ’s your story?” he said. She looked confused. Jesus. “Okay, you must have had underlings up your ass all your life, because that’s the dumbest story I’ve ever heard.”

Grace looked so surprised at this that Steve couldn’t help laughing. He tried to get ahold of himself—his shoulders were shaking as much as they could, and he didn’t want to throw the arm off if it was Bucky.

“Okay, seriously,” he said. “You could make him kill an animal when you all had enough control over him to make him kill _people_! That’s supposed to impress me? How could that impress _anyone_?”

“A normal human couldn’t just turn around and kill something he had a connection with,” Grace said.

“Uh, _you_ did,” Steve said. “You killed the rabbit! It sounds like you killed a bunch of them.”

He lay there laughing. It wasn’t like he thought Grace was going to drop a bombshell that would convince him Bucky wasn’t really a person—after all, Bucky had been trying and failing at the very same game for months—but she could have committed a little more.

Grace actually looked a little pissed off that Steve wasn’t appreciating her story. But she didn’t argue with him anymore. She leaned over him and took something out of her pocket—a felt-tip marker. She uncapped it and started drawing something on Steve’s jaw with her human hand. She moved her head and the arm on Steve’s chest scuttled to attention. But she turned and squinted at it, so Steve jerked his head up quickly and bit her hand.

He didn’t have especially sharp teeth, but he’d learned at a young age that most people don’t expect to be bitten. Grace yelled and jerked her hand away and the next thing Steve knew, the arm that had been on his chest was wrapped around her neck and squeezing tight.

Grace staggered, trying to pull it off her neck; she moved out of Steve’s sightline, but he heard her gasping. He saw an arm on his thigh twitch and reach up helplessly; blood sprayed on the side of his neck, and there was a thud as Grace’s body hit the ground. There was a brief silence.

“Well, I hope she won’t be offended if I don’t keep petting her after I kill her,” Bucky said. “Just a little joke, Sam—here, talk into my elbow, like so—”

Sam’s voice came out of the arm. “Hey there, Steve. How’re you doing?”

“Great,” Steve said.

“What?” There was a pause. “Bucky said you were paralyzed.”

“Well, obviously, I’m paralyzed,” Steve said. “I thought you meant compared to being dead.”

There was another pause, during which he was pretty sure he heard them laughing at him. “Well, you keep not being dead,” Sam said, “Bucky’s gonna keep you company while I get in the building, and I should be there in a few minutes. You’re lucky I still do weight training.”


	7. A Tired Microwave Oven

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Steve said. Sam was standing at the foot of the table; he’d stopped when he came into the room, then rolled his shoulders and come over to Steve, only to stop again and just stand there looking down at him. It was not an angle Steve was used to seeing him from. “Seriously, I know I’m an amazing feat of science, but can you look at me after we get out of here?”

Sam said, “Bucky, is that—”

“Don’t,” the Bucky-arm said. “Ask me later.”

“But I’m pretty sure—”

“What?” Steve said. “What is it?”

“Never mind,” Sam said. “C4, huh? This is for you.” He produced Steve and Bucky’s bathrobe from the duffel bag he was carrying.

“Whose idea was that?” Steve said. He was embarrassed to see the bathrobe, because Bucky had worn it the last time they had sex. In fact, pretty much the only thing they used the bathrobe for was stuff like that, because metal was uncomfortable in a clinch.

“Bucky packed the bag for you,” Sam said.

“Really, Buck?”

“If it gives Sam a thrill to wrestle a full suit of clothes onto your motionless body, I’m not _stopping_ him,” the arm said. “I just thought the robe would be easier.”

Steve had to admit that wasn’t wrong.

“Looking forward to seeing you in it,” Bucky said. “I’m unsyncing myself now. Fury should be here in a minute—have a nice walk, boys.”

There was a clunk as the arm, which had been partially upright, fell to the floor. Sam looked down at it, and past it. “So that’s Russell,” he said. “Hoisted by her own petard, huh? You ever wonder what a petard is?”

“No,” Steve said.

“Looks like she went quick,” Sam said. He leaned over Steve—their faces were very close. “This won’t take long,” he said quietly. He pulled Steve into a sitting position, one-handed, and tucked the bathrobe under him. He laid Steve back down and worked on putting his arms into the sleeves. “So,” he said, “I know what to say to a regular person, but you—I have no idea how to assess your injuries. Bucky said you’re gonna be moving again within the day.”

“How long was I out?” Steve asked.

“Since he talked to you before? Sixteen hours. Wait a sec.” Sam got his phone out of his pocket. “Bucky said I should take pictures, for the mission report. He said Fury wants them.”

“I didn’t even realize she drugged me until I woke up,” Steve said. “I guess maybe she did it while I was asleep.”

“Yeah, she did,” Sam said. “Bucky was watching her—can you believe that thing has eyes—”

“Don’t call him that,” Steve said automatically; then, embarrassed, he said, “You mean the arm he was in.”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam said. His face came back over Steve and blinked at him. “You been—was she talking to you about him?”

“I guess,” Steve said.

“He was listening through headphones, I didn’t—he didn’t look upset.” Sam had moved out of his view again.

“It’s not important,” Steve said.

“If you say so. Man, this is some nasty shit. Hydra doesn’t fuck around.”

“How’d Fury get in touch with you guys?”

“You left your phone. It was lying up there with your shield, on the hill.” Sam came back over, putting his phone in his pocket. He swung the duffel over his back and wrapped his arm around Steve’s shoulders, pulling him into a sitting position and scooping him up.

“I didn’t eat anything today, just to make it easier on you,” Steve said.

“I’ve carried guys twice as heavy as you,” Sam said. “Shit, I forgot to give you the protein bars Bucky gave me, and it’s not like you can reach in my pocket–”

“It’s fine.”

“If you say so,” Sam said. “Hey, did you realize how much food Bucky keeps on him? He wears those clothes with all the pockets. I thought he was just trying to look like a twelve-year-old skater kid, but we haven’t run out of food in two days.”

He was carrying Steve along a hall that looked the one Steve had walked through when he first entered. He had thought of the doors as leading to many possible rooms, but in reality a lot of them led to the same big lab.

“Bucky’s a really stylish hoarder,” Sam continued. “I mean, one time I shoplifted some cans of beans because I through there was going to be a nuclear war—”

Steve snorted.

“I just had a bad feeling!” Sam protested. “I returned them to the store after I remembered I hadn’t slept in about five days.”

“You just put them back on the shelf?”

“Yeah. I can’t believe no one caught me, I looked like I was carrying rocks in my pockets.” A door was open toward the end of the hall and Sam carried Steve through it and down a flight of stairs. Then he seemed to be walking flat along a short corridor.

When he opened the door at the end of the corridor, he walked up a few stairs and into what must have looked, from the outside, like a toolshed. There was a control panel covering most of one wall, and a video monitor in the middle of the room.

Nick Fury sat in a wooden chair. “Nice to see you, Captain,” he said. Bucky was sitting on the dirt floor with a laptop on his knees. He jerked his head up, gave Steve a really unimpressed look, and went back to what he was doing. “I’m sorry you were injured,” Fury said.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” said Steve. Sam crouched down and deposited him on the ground, propping him up against the wall opposite the control panel.

Steve was pretty sure Bucky was actively trying not to look at him and might just be scrolling up and down his computer screen over and over. Bucky had a pair of headphones around his neck, but Steve realized they weren’t plugged into the computer. He had the sleeve of his sweater rolled up to his elbow, and a panel in his forearm was open. His headphones were plugged in there, and several other wires trailed out of it, leading to both the control panel and the video monitor. “What is that?” Steve asked.

“My arm,” Bucky said, glancing up very briefly with the same unimpressed look.

“I didn’t know it could do that,” Steve said.

“Well, God forbid you don’t know every detail of my comings and goings,” Bucky replied. Steve decided to ignore him for the time being.

“Nice bathrobe,” Fury said. Bucky did smile at that.

“I’m paralyzed,” Steve said. “You want me to come out in a white tie and tails?”

“i mean it. Looks comfortable,” Fury said. “Wilson, you sent those pictures?”

“I got them,” Bucky said, raising his hand.

“Well, I didn’t send them yet,” Sam said. “You hacked my phone? Don’t be a creep, Bucky.”

“Texting is expensive. I’m helping you save money.”

“I’m fine for money.”

“Nobody who’s been in your car is gonna believe that,” Bucky said. He reached over and unplugged his headphones from his arm. Then he started yanking all the other cords out.

Fury sighed. “How many times did I say _don’t_ sever the connection yet?” he said as the video monitor went dark.

“We’re done already,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, done except for sending someone in to collect all that technology and destroy the body—”

“You can’t destroy the body, she has a family,” Bucky said.

“You can’t be serious,” said Fury.

Bucky looked at him, opening his eyes so wide they almost took up his whole face. “Yeah? What, just because she’s Hydra her husband and kids don’t get to have a wake or a place to visit her?”

Fury looked at Steve, apparently hoping he would say something in support of the idea that if someone had killed and tortured people, you didn’t need to be concerned about their kids or their memorial service. But Steve never got on Bucky’s case about things like that.

Fury looked back at Bucky. “What do you propose I do?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Bucky said. “You saw how easy Sam got in there once she was dead. You don’t need my help.”

“I’d like it.”

“They didn’t keep me around for my bright ideas,” Bucky said. He closed his computer and stood up, picking up his big rucksack and putting the laptop in. He closed the fasteners and pulled it over his shoulders, then said, “Okay, okay,” to Fury and knelt down on the ground. He plugged the video monitor into the control panel and pushed a few buttons, and the image came back on. “You really didn’t need me for that,” he said. “A goldfish could’ve done that. Sam, you think you can get Steve to the car?”

“How do you think I got him up here if I can’t carry him?” Sam said.

“I’m just offering,” Bucky said. “You want to throw out your back, go on ahead.”

Sam snorted. He crouched down, rolled his eyes at Steve, and picked him up again. Steve wasn’t sure if Sam was rolling his eyes about Bucky, Fury, or just the whole situation.

“Hold up,” Fury said.

“You can call him,” Bucky said. “Soon as he can pick up the phone I’m sure he’ll be chomping at the bit to report all the gory details.”

“I can report them now,” Steve said.

“We don’t work for you,” Bucky said. Steve couldn’t even see him or Fury; Sam was hovering at the door of the shed.

“I suppose that’s true,” Steve heard Fury say. The door opened and Sam carried Steve out into the woods.

“Sorry,” Sam said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Steve said. Bucky came up alongside them and Steve said, “What the hell, Buck? He didn’t do anything to you.”

“I got no quarrel with him,” Bucky said. He was looking at Steve, but Steve couldn’t get a good read on his expression because Sam kept jostling him. “I just want him to wait until you’re recovered. That really such a big deal you’re gonna jump down my throat about it?” When Steve didn’t answer Bucky pushed a granola bar into his face. “Here. Eat.”

“You’re crazy,” Steve said with his mouth full.

“And whose fault is that?” Bucky said. Steve took another bite.

“How’d you learn how to do all that stuff with computers and your arm? Did they teach you that?”

“No, genius. You let me be on the computer all the time. I just learned it. It’s not like it’s hard.”

“It’s not hard,” Steve repeated.

“It’s just pattern recognition,” Bucky said. When Steve finished the granola bar Bucky pulled his hand away and raced off ahead of them.

“Did he drop the wrapper on the ground?” Steve asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Sam said. “God, you two are like a pair of first graders.”

“Mostly him,” Steve said.

“Mostly him,” Sam said. “Except, when I’m talking to Bucky I say it’s mostly you.”

///

When they got to the car Bucky was sitting in the driver’s seat looking at something stupid on his phone. Sam put Steve in the back seat and sat next to him. “You can sit in the front if you want,” Steve said. “You don’t have to sit next to me.”

“Why are you so weird?” Sam said. “What if you fall over or something?”

Bucky had already started driving. He wasn’t a very good driver except for his speed; Sam really did have to adjust Steve several times when Bucky went around corners. He helped Steve eat a bunch of protein bars and water and candy which Bucky passed back to him in a steady stream.

When Bucky passed back a McDonald’s apple pie, Steve took a few bites before saying, “Wait, why the hell do you have this?”

Bucky said, “In case I needed it,” and turned on the radio so loud that no one could talk.

///

By the time Bucky pulled into a rest stop a few hours later, Steve could feel some vague sensations flickering on top of his skin. It kind of felt like Bucky’s way of running his hands over Steve—when they were younger, and recently, before they’d started doing other things. Sam got out to go to the bathroom and Steve spent some time arguing that Bucky should do the same. “What, somebody’s gonna come steal me out of the car?”

“Steve, just shut up,” Bucky said.

“He’s looking at cat pictures,” Sam said. “Come on, let him look at his cat pictures.”

They were so annoying as a team that Steve shut up and let Bucky sit in the front and look at his cat pictures. “Why don’t we get a cat?”

“Oh yeah,” Bucky said. “Better yet why don’t we get a rabbit? JK, LOL.”

“It’s bad enough everyone else communicates with a string of letters,” Steve said, “without you getting in on the action.”

“LMNO, PQRY,” Bucky said. Steve tried, but he couldn’t see Bucky’s face reflected in the window or in the rearview mirror. He was pretty sure he was smirking, though.

Then pain lanced through Steve’s arms and shoulders, sharp and vicious, and he couldn’t help grunting with the force of it. Bucky vaulted into the back seat and started massaging Steve’s arms, hard. Steve could mostly feel it, and also the worn softness of the bathrobe, rubbing against his skin. “Does that help?” Bucky asked.

It did help. “Did I make you drop your phone?”

“Nope,” Bucky said. He held his phone up. On the screen was the Wikipedia page for texting slang. Steve burst out laughing. “Oops,” Bucky said.

“You’re just as dumb as I am,” Steve said.

“Obv-ss,” Bucky said, sounding it out.

Steve turned his head—he couldn’t quite move his arm up the way he wanted, just nudge feebly, but he got his face against Bucky’s cheek and clumsily kissed him, moving for his mouth.

Bucky went rigid. “Oh,” he said softly, going loose again, “okay.”

He put his arm around Steve and leaned over him, but right then the pain shot through Steve’s stomach and chest and hips and he yelled again. Bucky’s hands were there, kneading him gentler this time, across his ribs, down his sides. “This is kind of embarrassing,” Steve said.

“What are you talking about?” Bucky said. He undid Steve’s seatbelt. “Gonna be your legs next, so—” He swung Steve’s legs across his lap.

“Where’s Sam?”

Bucky gestured with his head toward the window next to Steve. “He’s back over there smoking,” he said. “Think he saw me get back here and he’s giving us privacy to reunite.”

“He what?”

Bucky winced. “Okay, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t tell him on purpose—”

“It’s fine, Buck,” Steve said, since he was starting to put his palms up.

“We were packing up to come here and he just got nosy because I keep guns and knives in my bed. Well, he started laughing and said he’d had a feeling, and I’m not gonna tell him the real reason I don’t sleep in my bed, so I confirmed it.”

“Buck, Sam can—oh, _fuck_!” Steve yelled again as his legs splintered with pain. The way Bucky touched them didn’t actually make the pain go away, but the added sensation got on top of it in a way that helped. “You don’t have to—Sam can understand a lot of that stuff. How you have to sleep in the closet, how you—you don’t have to hide it from him.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky said. “I ended up telling him later. It’s a long drive.”

“That’s good,” Steve said.

He must have sounded a little too pleased, because Bucky scowled at him. A little pause passed between them and then Bucky said, “Still hurt?”

“It’s mostly gone,” Steve said.

“Good,” Bucky said. “It doesn’t take long, coming back, but it hurts like a bitch.”

“How many times did they—”

“IDK,” Bucky said. “That means I don’t know, okay? Shut up.”

“Jesus, okay,” Steve said. Then he said, “There is somewhere else that still hurts.”

Bucky sighed loudly.

“Well, you didn’t even touch it,” Steve said. “Is it still there? Is it okay? You don’t know!”

“All I ask is one day off,” Bucky said, “from constantly attending to your dick! It almost got left on a fucking table with the rest of you carted off to—” He stopped talking abruptly.

“What?” Steve said.

“Nothing,” Bucky said. Steve put an arm around him, kissing him more head-on, but Bucky pulled back and ducked his face down into Steve’s collarbone. “I lost you too, you know,” he said. “You were dead for me too. You ever think about that?”

“Of course I do,” Steve said, although maybe he hadn’t exactly known. “You weren’t really worried about me, were you?” Bucky lifted his face with probably the most unimpressed look Steve had ever seen on him—which in itself was pretty impressive. “What? You told me you’d be able to save me, and you were right. You did. It’s over, and I’m fine. No big thing.” As he was saying it he could feel how empty it was—the words he was saying felt like a bunch of pieces of cardboard he was pointlessly lying out in a row. “I mean, I guess I should have listened to you before, but—”

“So, here’s the thing,” Bucky said, “we all know I’m no more capable of love than a microwave oven, but Sam was really upset. We didn’t—especially when you went out for so long and onscreen we couldn’t tell if you were breathing, and I couldn’t get close enough to feel your heartbeat. That wasn’t right to do to him.”

“I see.”

“And I,” Bucky said, “well, I—”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Steve said, because it wasn’t something he wanted to belabor, but he knew it was important. “I don’t care if you—that was the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard, what she said about you. You saved me twice. I don’t care if you don’t feel the same things as other people—”

“Not a person,” Bucky corrected him.

“—or if someone just thinks you don’t,” Steve finished. “It’s just fucking stupid. I don’t know why people think everyone has to be crying into their pillow all the time these days. Except I won’t pitch a fit if you do want to cry into my pillow sometimes, since you tend to sleep on my rolled up jacket and leather doesn’t absorb water all that great.” He stopped talking when Bucky got a strange look on his face. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to acknowledge he knew about the jacket.

“So,” Bucky said, “I actually wasn’t gonna say I don’t feel anything for you. But if you don’t care, I guess we don’t have to talk about it.”

“Well, okay,” Steve said. “I guess we don’t.” But Bucky just kept looking at him with the same strange expression, his eyes bright and funny looking, and pretty soon Steve was embarrassed. “You got my phone when you found the shield, right?” he said. “I should call Fury.”

“Yeah, it’s in my coat,” Bucky said, “in the driver’s seat. I’d be glad to get it for you, but I’m stuck under your giant legs.”

“You could just move them,” Steve said.

“ _You_ could move them,” Bucky said, but he moved Steve’s legs out of his lap and climbed into the front seat. He rummaged through his coat and stuck Steve’s phone into the back seat at him. Steve took the phone.

Bucky put on his coat and went over to the big gas station convenience store where Sam was waiting. Sam was smoking one of those funny cigars—or maybe it was his medical reefer, because he passed it to Bucky, and they stood there passing it back and forth while Steve talked to Fury on the phone.

Steve went inside the convenience store, put on real clothes in the bathroom, and bought coffee and a prepackaged strawberry croissant. “Have you ever had one of those before?” asked the older lady at the counter.

“No,” Steve said. “Is it good?”

“No, it’s awful,” she said.

“Oh,” Steve said and then, feeling self conscious, “well, I’m really hungry.”

He tried to eat between Bucky and Sam, outside the store, but they kept making fun of the croissant. Bucky knocked on it with his metal hand. Sam said, “It looks like a corpse.”

“What in the world,” Steve said.

“That cherry stuff,” Sam said.

“It’s strawberry.”

“It’s blood is what it is,” Sam said.

“Why don’t you bake a cake about it,” Bucky said.

“Maybe I will,” said Sam. “No, look. It doesn’t look like a regular croissant.” He pointed. “The filling looks like it’s coming out through little irregular gashes.”

“I’m going in the car,” Steve said.

“No, no!” Sam said, trailing after him. “I’m not insulting your dead body croissant.”

“I think it looks like a face,” Bucky said, getting into the back of the car with Steve. “These two bumps are the eyes.” He nestled himself against Steve and they looked down at the croissant together. He pointed to where Steve had taken a bite out of it.

“Hey, Bucky,” Sam said as he pulled out of the parking lot, “I think you should sit closer to Steve. I think there might be room for a whole blade of grass between you.”

“Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities,” Bucky said. “But look, Steve, here’s the mouth.”

“Its mouth is too big,” Steve said. “Actually, it’s sort of like your mouth. It looks like you, if you were a croissant.” He held the croissant up, waving it back and forth like it was talking. “Regular people can’t possibly understand me! I can’t love anyone, I’m just an emotionless pastry.”

Bucky wheezed with laughter and headbutted Steve in the shoulder. Steve laughed more at Sam, who was solemnly regarding them in the rearview mirror.

“You know,” he said, “I’m glad the two of you have each other. Because no one else is going to understand what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Right, and what you said about the croissant was completely normal,” Steve said. Bucky was still laughing into his neck.

///

Steve couldn’t sleep, not really. When he started to fall asleep he just saw the kind of things he usually dreamed about—gore, death, and himself small or trapped or frozen, watching all of it. He thought also of the sight he’d seen before he took a shower, the thing Bucky had kept Sam from telling him about. He’d been marked all over, his body diagrammed and divided up. Grace’s arms had written on the skin where each part of him was intended to go.

“Stop it,” Bucky had said, and then, a little sharply, “Stop it. Fucking _stop looking at it_.” He came up behind Steve in the mirror and hastily put a smile on, wrapping his arms around Steve’s chest. “Hey, so I invited myself to your shower. Come on in with me.”

“Just wait a second,” Steve said. Bucky made such a pissed off face in the mirror that he said, “Oh, okay, fine.”

The shower had been a disorienting but altogether not too bad experience where Bucky tried to wash the markings off as fast as possible while distracting Steve with intermittent groping and a long story, heavy on tangents, about what happened once to Sam’s dad’s girlfriend at the grocery store. When the marks were gone he pushed Steve against the wall and jerked him off, nuzzling his throat and talking a mile a minute. He was talking about cereal or something. Steve lost track.

Steve had felt pretty good for an hour or so after that, but then he went to bed, and the longer he laid in the dark the worse things got. Remembering what it had been like to be helpless somehow almost felt worse than being helpless had felt. And his head had started putting things together, sort of: things Grace had said with the way Bucky talked about himself.

Steve had always known that Bucky was different from how he used to be; and he generally felt like this wasn’t so bad. It would be worse to cry about than it was to just get used to. But there was something sickening about seeing it so clearly, the way certain things had gotten under Bucky’s skin and grown to belong there. Steve could kill everyone who’d ever worked on him, and Bucky would keep thinking like them.

And Bucky wouldn’t want Steve to kill anyone, anyway.

It was three or four in the morning when Bucky came in and laid down on top of the covers. “You’re allowed under the covers,” Steve said automatically, before Bucky could ask, and before he remembered that Bucky couldn’t sleep in beds. “Hold up, you’re not gonna be able to sleep,” he forced himself to say as Bucky got under the covers and spooned up behind him.

Bucky didn’t say anything, just wrapped himself all around Steve. He was just wearing underwear and a hoodie, so Steve could feel almost all of his skin. The hoodie was open; he was wearing it mostly so he could put his left arm over Steve without making him cold.

“Were you having trouble sleeping?” Steve asked.

“Steve, hush,” Bucky said. He squeezed Steve.

Steve wanted to relax at the sensation of Bucky against him—not great, Steve wouldn’t lie to himself that Bucky was doing great—but here, not dead, and holding onto Steve of his own free will. But he couldn’t abide the thought of Bucky giving up his sleep, basically lying awake all night just because he knew Steve was feeling twitchy about things. It just didn’t seem like a good use of Bucky’s time; he had enough problems—

“Steve, _hush_ ,” Bucky said. His mouth pressed against the back of Steve’s neck. “I can hear the wheels turning in your head. Shut _up_. _Sleep_.”

Steve hushed.


End file.
